Jeff Bezos went on CNBC's Squawk Box. He told investors to relax about the AI bubble.
"Even if it does turn out to be a bubble, you shouldn't worry about it," he said.
His pitch is simple. The cash going into AI buys tech that lasts, even if the stocks do not.
Bezos says hot money has a good side. Big checks fly, and odd ideas get cash.
A chunk of the tech that comes out of it lasts long after the crash. That is the side bet.
He likened the AI rush to the 1990s biotech bubble. A lot of investors got burned.
But the drugs made then are still saving lives today.
The takeaway: bubbles can be good for the broader market, even when they hurt single bets.
The dollar sums are eye-catching. Big Tech is on pace to spend $700 billion on AI tools this year.
That includes Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and other big cloud names.
We unpack what spend like that means for your money each morning in Market Briefs - and you get a free investing class as a sign-up bonus.
OpenAI's Sam Altman has gone the other way. He has warned that investors may be "overexcited about AI."
His own firm is now worth more than $850 billion. It has set aside billions for new data centers.
Both sides have a real point. The bull case is that AI is real and will pay off for decades.
The bear case is that no field has ever taken in $700 billion in a year with no waste.
Even Bezos said not every dollar is going to a good idea. He said investors are still learning to tell good ideas from bad.
The good ones, he added, tend to pay for the losers.
Bezos also said a lot of his own time goes to AI.
Most of his focus is on the tech. That spans Amazon, Blue Origin, and his new startup Project Prometheus.
Project Prometheus launched in November with $6.2 billion in funding. It is run by Bezos and Vik Bajaj, a former Google X exec.
The firm is building what Bezos calls an "artificial general engineer."
Think of it as AI for tasks like engineering, making things, and drug design.
Bezos set Project Prometheus up as its own firm. He did not fold it into Amazon or Blue Origin.
The startup "deserves its own special focus," he said.
If the man who built Amazon is this deep on AI, the spend is not slowing any time soon.
Bezos and the rest of Big Tech keep writing checks. Markets and stocks may swing along the way.
A few signals will hint at what comes next in AI:
If you want a clear read on where AI money is moving each day, join Market Briefs - the daily email comes with a 45-minute investing course thrown in as a free bonus.
